A’s fans have replaced righteous fury with resignation and sadness

On Monday, I went to the A’s-Mariners game at the Oakland Coliseum, wearing a green shirt I’d spray-painted with a heartfelt message in yellow: JOHN FISHER F—K U. I came hoping to stir things up, to party with bitter-but-raucous A’s fans one last time at their home stadium, the infamous “last dive bar in baseball.” Instead, what I got was a big, fat bummer. A recent ESPN story had the A’s in their “hospice phase” in Oakland, and that’s a fitting description of the vibes at the Coliseum right now.

Don’t get me wrong: Most A’s fans still heartily endorse the sentiment that was printed across my chest in barely legible lettering. But the handful I spoke with Monday seemed past being angry. They were resigned, apathetic and, most of all, simply sad. I don’t blame them. Hearing their stories made me sad, too. 

“They can do what they want, I guess,” vendor Gerald Flynn told me in a flat voice, referring to A’s owner John Fisher and his cronies. 

Flynn, spry for his 75 years, has been selling cotton candy and other food items at the Coliseum for 45 years. He remembers when the A’s first came to town, in 1968. Whenever they actually leave, he’ll be out of a job.

“I’m kind of indifferent. I’m sorry about it. It’s terrible for the community,” he said. “But the writing was on the wall, so my emotions aren’t boiling over.”

For a decade, Fisher has been intentionally tanking his own baseball team and threatening to move it elsewhere — and then using the ensuing erosion of fan support as leverage to push for a new stadium. It’s a cartoonishly evil routine that’s also the plot of the 1989 comedy “Major League.” A’s fans seem to agree it’s less funny in real life. 

In April, Fisher announced he’d be moving the team to Las Vegas, finally ending a torturous cycle of bad-faith negotiations with the city of Oakland. Legions of loyal A’s fans were left heartbroken and pissed off.

They fought back with two “reverse boycott” games that packed the Coliseum with rowdy A’s fans and orchestrated chants of “sell the team” at away games all season long. For a split second, if you squinted, it looked like maybe Fisher would relent and strike a last-minute deal with Oakland or sell to someone who would.

It was a captivating underdog story. I’m not an A’s fan, but I’m a baseball fan, and I’d been following the story from afar all season. I was disgusted on their behalf and wanted to share in their communal outrage. 

But now, as fall creeps in and the move to Vegas seems final, the fight has gone out of many A’s fans, or at least the ones who would talk to a reporter at a lifeless 5-0 weeknight loss to the visiting Mariners. They’re still angry, but they’re also finally coming to terms with the terrible reality that something they love will soon be taken from them.

“To be honest with you, he should go f—k himself, because he’s a f—king c—t who should f—king choke on rocks,” A’s fan Mia told me, when asked how she feels about Fisher.

“Because he’s a bitch,” she added. 

Mia, a teenager at the game with her parents, was in the cheap seats behind left field, behind my friends and me. She liked my shirt. A lifelong, die-hard A’s fan, she was sporting a fitted A’s cap embroidered with a flash of golden California poppies. Mia said she’s collected “a lot of A’s hats” over the years.

“That’s kind of her signature thing,” her mother, Eva, added. (She told me her daughter is autistic and doesn’t normally use this many curse words.)

“She’s just speaking her truth,” Eva said. “I tell her she can only do that at the A’s game and at home.” She told me the A’s are her daughter’s “favorite thing in life.”

Even so, mother and daughter alike said they can’t bring themselves to continue rooting for the A’s when they finally leave town. Instead, they’ve become fans of the Savannah Bananas, an unaffiliated minor league team known for wacky antics like playing on stilts and doing backflips before catching pop flies.

“I’ve had every gamut of emotion possible this season,” Eva said. “I started off beyond sad and depressed. Then, I got really f—king bitter and angry, and now …” she trailed off just as she was drowned out by the announcer. Mariners shortstop J.P. Crawford was up to bat. 

I spent the next few innings wandering drunkenly around the stands, chatting with A’s fans in the bleachers. A few laughed when they saw my shirt and shouted back at me with raised fists, “F—K JOHN FISHER!” Others just kind of nodded and shook their heads.

Pierre, a 30-something guy who declined to give his last name, has been going to A’s games since he was a kid. 

“I’m born and raised here,” he told me while looking up and sighing. “I don’t even know what to say. It’s horrible, just horrible.”

Eddie O’Loughlin has been in Oakland for only a few years, but in that time, he’s become an A’s fan. 

“My emotions? Apathy,” he said. “It’s hard to imagine them being gone. I’ll be rooting against them when they leave.”

I bumped into Matt Ray, an old friend from college I hadn’t seen since Fisher took full control of the A’s. He’s since moved out of Oakland but grew up here going to A’s games.

“I don’t know that it’s resignation, really,” he said. “Just kind of light resentment.”

“This is the last good dive bar in MLB, you know?” he said, referring to the Coliseum. “Even though the beers are still like 14 bucks.”